artists

Mladen Dolar

1961, Maribor, SILives in Ljubljana, SI

The Voice and the Fortress, 2008
Text

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

Mladen Dolar’s scholarly work is situated between psychoanalysis, Structuralism, German Idealism and the philosophy of music. Currently he is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy in Ljubljana University. Sound, voice and music are fields Dolar investigates in such volumes as Opera’s Second Death (co-authored with Slavoj Žižek, 2001) and A Voice and Nothing More (2006), examining the linguistics of the voice, the metaphysics of the voice, the ethics of the voice (with the voice of conscience), the paradoxical relation between the voice and the body, the politics of the voice and the strange aesthetics of the voice. For Scenarios Mladen Dolar seeks to reflect upon the possibilities and boundaries of imagination triggered by voice and sound and the strangeness of the object voice. Its manifold vagaries and paradoxes – literally corresponding to the labyrinth-like construction of the fortress – encourage a critical approach on several levels.

Location

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

Situated on one of Europe’s most important travel routes, between Bolzano/Bozen and the Brenner pass, the fortress Fortezza/Franzensfeste will serve as one of Manifesta 7’s venues. It was built in the 1830s by the Habsburgian Empire in order to defend the north/south passage through the Dolomite mountain region from two sides. Shaped and ruled by changing military scenarios, which mostly remained imaginary, since the fortress has never witnessed battle, the site itself constitutes the basis for formulating the artistic context of the exhibition by Manifesta 7.
The project entitled Scenarios aims to transform the spectacular backdrop of Fortezza/Franzensfeste into a scripted space with voice recordings, text, light and landscape in order to alter our idea of how imaginary scenarios shape our understanding of past and future, circumstance and possibility. Scenarios will be an ‘immaterial’ exhibition, that attempts to shift the site of the exhibition to the imagination of the listening visitor. Writers from all over the world contribute texts to Scenarios, especially developed for this context. These texts reflect the processes of scenario production and imaginative possibility itself. As voice recordings, the texts are individually installed as sound works in the repetitive interior spaces of the fortress, in an architectural setting characterised by the absence of its historical users and the scenarios they were once part of.
Scenarios is a critical reflection of the role that scenarios occupy in our society and the individual or collective imaginary. Today, though often unconscious or involuntary, we are part of “scenarios” that have already been projected on and framed us, preconceived our presence, and conditioning the situations and experiences of everyday life. The project aims to make us reflect on how we come to complete the scenarios and stories by becoming part of them. As an exhibition project, Scenarios thus shows no (or little) images, but rather reflects on those already we carry with us, that are imposed on us, or which creative imagination brings about. It is meant to explicitly break with the regime of visibility, and the production of (material) evidence.
Adam Budak, Anselm Franke/Hila Peleg, Raqs Media Collective
SCENARIOS
Dramaturgy by Ant Hampton, Audio Design by Hannes Hoelzl, Furniture Design by Martino Gamper
CONTRIBUTORS
Shahid Amin, Hélène Binet, Brave New Alps, Adriana Cavarero, Mladen Dolar, Harun Farocki, Karø Goldt, Larry Gottheim, Renée Green, Timo Kahlen, Karl Kels, Thomas Meinecke, Glen Neath, Margareth Obexer, Philippe Rahm, Arundhati Roy, Saskia Sassen, Michael Snow, Saadi Yousef